On May 28th, 2008, a group of concerned employees, volunteers, and donors attended a board meeting in an attempt to get information about recent radical changes in policy and staff. After collecting the names of those who attended the meeting, the board refused to answer any of the questions and left the building.

A wave of staff firings began the next day. Within a week, all but one of the staff members had been fired or resigned. Decades worth of experience at the shelter was lost.

Since then, the shelter seems to have had issues maintaining even the lower staffing levels. Cleaning is taking longer to finish, even with the shelter now employing a professional cleaning service.

There are three postings to this past Tuesday's Craig's List, for a vet tech, kennel technician and animal shelter aide. The postings were all done within a 3-minute period, for a nonprofit working with cats, and the Hermitage has used Craig's List in the past to fill their vacancies, so I'm fairly certain these must be at the Hermitage. If it is them, then that's half their cat care staff. If any of the former workers would be willing to talk to me, on or off the record, please contact the webmaster.

My attorney has just informed me of the receipt of a communication from the Hermitage Board, which has accepted Mary Jo Spring's resignation as Executive Director.

I'd also like to thank the Board members for choosing the Blue Willow patio for their discussion of the new organizational chart, their personal opinions of Ms. Spring, and the upcoming budget. It totally rocks when you just drop information in my lap like that.

Ms. Spring went 0 for 2 last week. Tuesday was spent embarrassing herself and the Hermitage Board in their continuing failed attempt to silence dissent (see Tucson Weekly article, "Tables Turned"). She then made time on Thursday to literally phone in her testimony to an Employment Security Commission hearing, where she was challenging the unemployment compensation of yet another former employee, Linda Riley. I received confirmation this Wednesday that Ms. Spring was denied on that attempt also.

The more employees an employer fires, and the more challenges to their unemployment claims are denied, the greater the number of points the employer must pay into the system. As of last October, the Hermitage had gone through 56 employees in 14 months, fairly impressive for an organization that started that time with only 21 employees. I would estimate that number at about 62 now. Although I'm not certain how many were fired outright and how many were pressured out, I imagine the percentage is they're paying to the state at this point is pretty high.

And yet, the Hermitage Board continues to not only employ Ms. Spring, but to support her fully in everything she has done.

Mary Jo Spring continues to cut down costs at the Hermitage by firing employees. The two most recent ones to get the boot were Ed and Michelle. That's now over 200% employee turnover since August 2007. ESG, the payroll/benefits/HR company the Hermitage outsourced every thing to, is certainly earning its keep.

By the way, everyone who works at the Hermitage is now an employee of ESG, not the Hermitage. Nice way to shield yourself from all those little unpleasantnesses.

The front of the Save the Hermitage T-shirts will feature a list of former staff, or volunteers, your pick. Each person will also receive a laundry marker so they can add to the list as it grows. Since these are being done as individual iron-ons, if you are a person whose name actually appears on the T-shirt, you have the option of having your own name highlighted in red. As the former administrative admin informed me, the number of former staff from this year now stands at 56. (No wonder the Hermitage has contracted out its HR to a private company, they need one person dedicated solely to filling out W-2s). Due to the length of the list, there was some debate as to whether we should make this available as a T-shirt or a T-shirt style dress, but we finally decided to stick with the T-shirt, and encourage people to add new names to the sleeves.